Password Policy

Overview

Passwords
are an important aspect of computer security. They are the front line of
protection for user accounts. A poorly
chosen password can result in the compromise of Agnes Scott's entire campus
network. As such, all Agnes Scott College faculty, staff, students, contractors
and vendors with access to Agnes Scott College systems are responsible for
taking the appropriate steps, as outlined below, to select and secure their
passwords.

Purpose

The
purpose of this policy is to establish a standard for creation of strong
passwords, the protection of those passwords, and the frequency of change.

Policy

General

The
following password creation guidelines are based upon experience and common
sense. The software used
to change passwords will screen for most of these guidelines as an aid in
creating secure passwords.

Passwords
will expire every 120 days.

The
system will notify a user upon login that their password is about to expire and
give them the option to change
it at that time.

The
system will keep a history of the past six (6) used passwords by user
and will not allow the user to reuse
a previously used password.

Password
resets for forgotten passwords can be done by the Help Desk, the owner of the
account must come
to the ITS Help Desk in Walters Hall, with a valid student or employee ID to
have the account password
reset.

Guidelines

A.
General Password Construction Requirements

In
general, a password should be as long as possible while still being
easy-to-remember. The following password
requirements have been established for constructing new passwords:

All
network passwords must be a minimum of eight characters in length.

All
network passwords cannot contain your user account name or parts or your
full name.

Network
passwords must contain characters from three of the following four
categories:

English
uppercase characters (A through Z)

English
lowercase characters (a through z)

Base
10 digits (0 through 9)

Non-alphabetic
characters (for example, !, $, #, %)

B.
Password Protection Standards

The
following password protection standards have been established to maintain the
security benefits associated
with the password change policy.

Do not
use the same password for Agnes Scott College accounts as for other non -Agnes
Scott